You write Snowflake in a very different environment

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How does Snowflake compare to Microsoft's T-SQL for SQL Server? Part three of a five-part series of blogs
All dialects of SQL are similar, you'd think, but the different ethos and editing environment of Snowflake versus SQL Server make the switch surprisingly difficult, as this blog explains. How does Snowflake compare to Microsoft's T-SQL for SQL Server? Differences in SQL You write Snowflake in a very different environment (this blog) Relationships and primary keys don't exist in Snowflake Some SQL programming differences

How does Snowflake compare to Microsoft's T-SQL for SQL Server?

Part three of a five-part series of blogs

All dialects of SQL are similar, you'd think, but the different ethos and editing environment of Snowflake versus SQL Server make the switch surprisingly difficult, as this blog explains.

How does Snowflake compare to Microsoft's T-SQL for SQL Server?
Differences in SQL
You write Snowflake in a very different environment (this blog)
Relationships and primary keys don't exist in Snowflake
Some SQL programming differences

Posted by Andy Brown on 28 January 2026

Most people who write SQL in SQL Server do it through SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). Most people who write SQL in Snowflake do it through Snowsight, the web-based Snowflake interface.

The two environments compared. They are very different!

However, it's the completely different business model which makes transitioning from T-SQL to Snowflake SQL tricky. Although Snowflake (obviously) contains databases, you also need to know about some other concepts:

Concept	Notes
Warehouses	These are places in which you run queries on a pay-per-use basis (effectively they're CPUSs for hire).
Roles	You can't do anything in Snowflake until you've said what role you will play in accessing data.

So in order to run a typical Snowflake query, you often have to say which warehouse and role you're using. For example:

The selected commands make sure that we're using the correct computing area and role.

This all makes getting started with Snowflake a bit harder than getting started with SSMS.

One other huge difference behind-the-scenes which probably won't affect you, but is nice to know: Snowflake stores data in columns, whereas SQL Server stores data in rows (so you can't index columns in Snowflake, for example).

Parts of this blog
How does Snowflake compare to Microsoft's T-SQL for SQL Server? Differences in SQL You write Snowflake in a very different environment (this blog) Relationships and primary keys don't exist in Snowflake Some SQL programming differences

Some other pages relevant to these blogs include:

Classes in Snowflake

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